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Thursday, April 24, 2014

Courts, Judges and Politics

Home Courts, Judges and Politics led by Mark Wolf PRIMARY TABS
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Thursday, April 24, 2014 - 4:00pm Event Type: Study Groups 8. April
24, 2014 – From the Pentagon Papers to Edward Snowden The guest
speaker will be James Greenfield, the New York Times editor of the
Pentagon Papers. This session will explore the role of the courts
in balancing the interests of free speech and national security
historically and in the internet age. In 1971, the unauthorized
disclosure of the Pentagon Papers, a classified history of the
VietNam war, exposed systematic lies by the administration of
President Lyndon Johnson to Congress and the American people, and
led to a Supreme Court ruling that makes it very difficult for the
government to obtain court orders prohibiting publication of
classified information. As a result, the government has
increasingly relied on the threat of criminal prosecution to deter
such disclosures. The advent of the internet has raised the risks
for the government and the media. The courts are now again
challenged to decide competing, compelling claims of fundamental
importance to the future of American democracy. Trevor Timm,
co-founder and the executive director of the Freedom of the Press
Foundation, will also join the study group. He is a writer,
activist, and lawyer who specializes in free speech and government
transparency issues. His work has appeared in The Atlantic, Al
Jazeera,Foreign Policy, The Guardian, Harvard Law and Policy
Review, Politico, PBS MediaShift and Salon. Room: FDR ***All study
groups are off-the-record and not for media coverage***